“Though my mind’s notHoodwinked with rustxc marvels, I do
thinkThere
are more things in the grove, the air, the flood,Yea, and the charnelled earth, than
what wise man,Who walks so proud as if his form
aloneFilled
the wide temple of the universe,Will let a frail mind say, ‘I’d write
i' the creedO` the sagest head alive, that fearful
forms,Holy
or reprobate, do page men’s heels ;That shapes, too horrid for our gaze,
stand o’er
The murderer’s dust, and for revenge glare up,Even till the stars weep fire for very
pity’.”

Along the sea of Solway—romantic on
the Scottish side, with its woodlands, its bays, its cliffs,
and headlands ; and interesting on the English side, with
its many beautiful towns with their shadows on the water,
rich pastures, safe harbours, and numerous ships—there still
linger many traditional stories of a maritime nature, most
of them connected with superstitions singularly wild and
unusual. To the curious, these tales afford a rich fund of
entertainment, from the many diversities of the same story ;
some dry and barren, and stripped of all the embellishments
of poetry; others dressed out in all the riches of a
superstitious belief and haunted imagination. In this they
resemble the inland traditions of the peasants; but many of
the oral treasures of the Galwegian or the Cumbrian coast
have the stamp of the Dane and the Norseman upon them, and
claim but a remote or faint affinity with the legitimate
legends of Caledonia. Something like a rude prosaic outline
of several of the most noted of the northern ballads—the
adventures and depredations of the old ocean kings—still
lend life to the evening tale ; and, among others, the story
of the Haunted Ships is still popular among the maritime
peasantry.

One fine harvest evening I went on
board the shallop of Richard Faulder, of Allanbay, and
committing ourselves to the waters, we allowed a gentle wind
from the east to waft us at its pleasure towards the
Scottish coast. We passed the sharp promontory of Siddick,
and skirting the land within a stone-cast, glided along the
shore till we came within sight of the ruined Abbey of
Sweetheart. The green mountain of Criffell ascended beside
us ; and the bleat of the flocks from its summit, together
with the winding of the evening horn of the reapers, came
softened into something like music over land and sea. We
pushed our shallop into a deep and wooded bay, and sat
silently looking on the serene beauty of the place. The moon
glimmered in her rising through the tall shafts of the pines
of Caerlaverock; and the sky, with scarce a cloud, showered
down on wood, and headland, and bay, the twinkling beams of
a thousand stars, rendering every object visible. The tide,
too, was coming with that swift and silent swell observable
when the wind is gentle; the woody curves along the land
were filling with the flood, till it touched the green
branches of the drooping trees; while in the centre current
the roll and the plunge of a thousand pellecks told to the
experienced fisherman that salmon were abundant.

As we looked, we saw an old man
emerging from a path that winded to the shore through a
grove of doddered hazel; he carried a halve-net on his back,
while behind him came a girl bearing a small harpoon, with
which the fishers are remarkably dexterous in striking their
prey. The senior seated himself on a large gray stone, which
overlooked the bay, laid aside his bonnet, and submitted his
bosom and neck to the refreshing sea breeze ; and taking his
harpoon from his attendant, sat with the gravity and
composure of a spirit of the flood, with his ministering
nymph behind him. We pushed our shallop to the shore, and
soon stood at their side.

"This is old Mark Macmoran, the mariner, with his granddaughter Barbara,” said
Richard Faulder, in a whisper that had something of fear in
it; "he knows every creek, and cavern, and quicksand in
Solway,— has seen the Spectre Hound that haunts the Isle of
Man ; has heard him bark, and at every bark has seen a ship
sink; and he has seen, too, the Haunted Ships in full sail;
and, if all tales be true, has sailed in them himself ;—he’s
an awful person."

Though I perceived
in the communication of my friend something of the
superstition of the sailor, I could not help thinking that
common rumour had made a happy choice in singling out old
Mark to maintain her intercourse with the invisible world.
His hair, which seemed to have refused all acquaintance with
the comb, hung matted upon his shoulders; a kind of mantle,
or rather blanket, pinned with a wooden skewer round his
neck, fell mid-leg down, concealing all his nether garments
as far as a pair of hose, darned with yarn of all
conceivable colours, and a pair of shoes, patched and
repaired till nothing of the original structure remained,
and clasped on his feet with two massive silver buckles.

If the dress of
the old man was rude and sordid, that of his granddaughter
was gay, and even rich.

She wore a boddice
of fine wool, wrought round the bosom with alternate leaf
and lily, and a kirtle of the same fabric, which almost
touching her white and delicate ankle, showed her snowy
feet, so fairy-light and round that they scarcely seemed to
touch the grass where she stood. Her hair—a natural ornament
which woman seeks much to improve—was of a bright glossy
brown, and encumbered rather than adorned with a snood, set
thick with marine productions, among which the small clear
pearl found in the Solway was conspicuous. Nature had not
trusted to a handsome shape, and a sylph-like air, for young
Barbara’s influence over the heart of man ; but had bestowed
a pair of large bright blue eyes, swimming in liquid light,
so full of love, and gentleness, and joy, that all the
sailors, from Annanwater to far St Bees, acknowledged their
power, and sung songs about the bonnie lass of Mark Macmoran.
She stood holding a small gaff-hook of polished steel in her
hand, and seemed not dissatisfied with the glances I
bestowed on her from time to time, and which I held more
than requited by a single glance of those eyes which
retained so many capricious hearts in subjection.

The tide, though
rapidly augmenting, had not yet filled the bay at our feet.
The moon now streamed fairly over the tops of Caerlaverock
pines, and showed the expanse of ocean dimpling and
swelling, on which sloops and shallops came dancing, and
displaying at every turn their extent of white sail against
the beam of the moon. I looked on old Mark the Mariner, who,
seated motionless on his gray stone, kept his eye fixed on
the increasing waters with a look of seriousness and sorrow
in which I saw little of the calculating spirit of a mere
fisherman. Though he looked on the coming tide, his eyes
seemed to dwell particularly on the black and decayed hulls
of two vessels which, half immersed in the quicksand, still
addressed to every heart a tale of shipwreck and desolation.
The tide wheeled and foamed around them; and creeping inch
by inch up the side, at last fairly threw its waters over
the top, and a long and hollow eddy showed the resistance
which the liquid element received.

The moment they
were fairly buried in the water, the old man clasped his
hands together, and said—

"Blessed be the
tide that will break over and bury ye for ever! Sad to
mariners, and sorrowful to maids and mothers, has the time
been you have choked up this deep and bonnie bay. For evil
were you sent, and for evil have you continued. Every season
finds from you its song of sorrow and wail, its funeral
processions, and its shrouded corses. Woe to the land where
the wood grew that made ye? Cursed be the axe that hewed ye
on the mountains, the bands that joined ye together, the bay
that ye first swam in, and the wind that wafted ye here!
Seven times have ye put my life in peril; three fair sons
have ye swept from my side, and two bonnie grand-bairns; and
now, even now, your waters foam and flash for my
destruction, did I venture my frail limbs in quest of food
in your deadly bay. I see by that ripple and that foam, and
hear by the sound and singing of your surge, that ye yearn
for another victim, but it shall not be me or mine."

Even as the old
mariner addressed himself to the wrecked ships, a young man
appeared at the southern extremity of the bay, holding his
halve-net in his hand, and hastening into the current. Mark
rose, and shouted, and waved him back from a place which, to
a person unacquainted with the dangers of the bay, real and
superstitious, seemed sufficiently perilous : his
grand-daughter, too, added her voice to his, and waved her
white hands; but the more they strove the faster advanced
the peasant, till he stood to his middle in the water, while
the tide increased every moment in depth and strength.

"Andrew, Andrew!” cried the young woman, in a voice quavering with emotion,
"turn, turn, I tell you. O the ships, the haunted ships!" But the
appearance of a fine run of fish had more influence with the
peasant than the voice of bonnie Barbara, and forward he
dashed, net in hand. In a moment he was borne off his feet,
and mingled like foam with the water, and hurried towards
the fatal eddies which whirled and reared round the sunken
ships. But he was a powerful young man, and an expert
swimmer: he seized on one of the projecting ribs of the
nearest hulk, and clinging to it with the grasp of despair,
uttered yell after yell, sustaining himself against the
prodigious rush of the current.

From a sheiling of
turf and straw within the pitch of a bar from the spot where
we stood, came out an old woman bent with age, and leaning
on a crutch.

"I heard the voice of that lad Andrew Lammie; can the chield be drowning, that he skirls sae
uncannily?” said the old woman, seating herself on the
ground and looking earnestly at the water.

By this time I had
thrown myself into the shallop, followed reluctantly by
Richard Faulder, over whose courage and kindness of heart
superstition had great power ; and with one push from the
shore, and some exertion in sculling we came within a quoit-cast
of the unfortunate fisherman. He stayed not to profit by our
aid ; for when he perceived us near, he uttered a piercing
shriek of joy, and bounded toward us through the agitated
element the full length of an oar. I saw him for a second on
the surface of the water ; but the eddying current sucked
him down ; and all I ever beheld of him again was his hand
held above the flood, and clutching in agony at some
imaginary aid. I sat gazing in horror on the vacant sea
before us ; but a breathing-time before, a human being, full
of youth, and strength, and hope, was there: his cries were
still ringing in my ears, and echoing in the woods ; and now
nothing was seen or heard save the turbulent expanse of
water, and the sound of its chafing on the shores. We pushed
back our shallop, and resumed our station on the cliff
beside the old mariner and his descendant.

"Wherefore sought
ye to peril your own lives fruitlessly,” said Mark, "in
attempting to save the doomed? Who so touches these infernal
ships never survives to tell the tale. Woe to the man who is
found nigh them at midnight when the tide has subsided, and
they arise in their former beauty, with fore-castle, and
deck, and sail, and pennon and shroud ! Then is seen the
streaming of lights along the water from their cabin
windows, and then is heard the sound of mirth and the
clamour of tongues and the infernal whoop and halloo, and
song, ringing far and wide. Woe to the man who comes nigh
them!”

To all this my companion listened with
a breathless attention. I felt something touched with a
superstition to which I partly believed I had seen one
victim offered up ; and I inquired of the old mariner—

"How and when
came these haunted ships there? To me they seem but the
melancholy relics of some unhappy voyagers, and much more
likely to warn people to shun destruction, than entice and
delude them to it.”

"And so," said
the old man with a smile, which had more of sorrow in it
than of mirth; "and so, young man, these black and
shattered hulks seem to the eye of the multitude. But things
are not what they seem : that water, a kind and convenient
servant to the wants of man, which seems so smooth, and so
dimpling, and so gentle, has swallowed up a human soul even
now ; and the place which it covers, so fair and so level,
is a faithless quicksand out of which none escape. Things
are otherwise than they seem. Had you lived as long as I
have had the sorrow to live; had you seen the storms, and
braved the perils, and endured the distresses which have
befallen me; had you sat gazing out on the dreary ocean at
midnight on a haunted coast ; had you seen comrade after
comrade, brother after brother, and son after son, swept
away by the merciless ocean from your very side; had you
seen the shapes of t`riends,doomed to the wave and the
quicksand, appearing to you in the dreams and visions of the
night; then would your mind have been prepared for crediting
the strange legends of mariners; and the two haunted Danish
ships would have had their terrors for you, as they have for
all who sojourn on this coast.

"Of the time and
cause of their destruction," continued the old man, " I know
nothing certain ; they have stood as you have seen them for
uncounted time ; and while all other ships wrecked on this
unhappy coast have gone to pieces, and rotted, and sunk away
in a few years, these two haunted hulks have neither sunk in
the quicksand, nor has a single spar or board been
displaced. Maritime legend says, that two ships of Denmark
having had permission, for a time, to work deeds of darkness
and dolour on the deep, were at last condemned to the
whirlpool and the sunken rock, and were wrecked in this
bonnie bay, as a sign to seamen to be gentle and devout. The
night when they were lost was a harvest evening of uncommon
mildness and beauty: the sun had newly set ; the moon came
brighter and brighter out ; and the reapers, laying their
sickles at the root of the standing corn, stood on rock and
bank, looking at the increasing magnitude of the waters, for
sea and land were visible from St Bees to Barnhourie.

"The sails of the
two vessels were soon seen bent for the Scottish coast; and
with a speed outrunning the swiftest ship, they approached
the dangerous quicksands and headland of Borranpoint. On the
deck of the foremost ship not a living soul was seen, or
shape, unless something in darkness and form resembling a
human shadow could be called a shape, which flitted from
extremity to extremity of the ship, with the appearance of
trimming the sails, and directing the vessel’s course. But
the decks of its companion were crowded with human shapes;
the captain, and mate, and sailor, and cabin boy, all seemed
there; and from them the sound of mirth and minstrelsy
echoed over land and water. The coast which they skirted
along was one of extreme danger; and the reapers shouted to
warn them to beware of sandbank and rock ; but of this
friendly counsel no notice was taken, except that a large
and famished dog, which sat on the prow, answered every
shout with a long, loud, and melancholy howl. The deep
sandbank of Carsethorn was expected to arrest the career of
these desperate navigators ; but they passed, with the
celerity of waterfowl, over an obstruction which had wrecked
many pretty ships.

"Old men shook
their heads, and departed, saying, ‘ We have seen the fiend
sailing in a bottomless ship; let us go home and pray :’ but
one young and wilful man said, ‘ Fiend! I’ll warrant it’s
nae fiend, but douce Janet Withershins, the witch, holding a
carouse with some of her Cumberland cummers, and mickle red
wine will be spilt atween them. ’Od, I would gladly have a
toothfu’! I’ll warrant it’s nane o’ your cauld sour slae-water,
like a bottle of Bailie Skrinkie’s port, but right drap-o’-my-heart’s-blood
stuff, that would waken a body out of their last linen. I
wonder whaur the cummers will anchor their craft?’

"‘And I’ll vow,’
said another rustic, ‘the wine they quaff is none of your
visionary drink, such as a drouthy body has dished out to
his lips in a dream; nor is it shadowy and unsubstantial,
like the vessels they sail in, which are made out of a
cockle-shell, or a cast-off slipper, or the parting of a
seaman’s right thumb-nail. I once got a handsel out of a
witch’s quaigh myself ;—auld Marion Mathers of Dustiefoot,
whom they tried to bury in the old kirkyard of Dunscore ;
but the cummer raise as fast as they laid her down, and
naewhere else would she lie but in the bonnie green kirkyard
of Kier, among douce and sponsible folk. So I’ll vow that
the wine of a witch’s cup is as fell liquor as ever did a
kindly turn to a poor man’s heart; and be they fiends, or be
they witches, if they have red wine asteer, I’ll risk a
droukit sark for ae glorious tout on’t.’

“‘Silence, ye
sinners,’ said the minister’s son of a neighbouring parish,
who united in his own person his father’s lack of devotion
with his mother’s love of liquor. ‘Whisht! Speak as if ye
had the fear of something holy before ye. Let the vessels
run their own way to destruction : who can stay the eastern
wind, and the current of the Solway sea? I can find ye
Scripture warrant for that : so let them try their strength
on Blawhooly rocks, ; and their might on the broad
quicksand. There’s a surf running there would knock the ribs
together of a galley built by the imps of the pit, and
commanded by the Prince of Darkness. Bonnily and bravely
they sail away there; but before the blast blows by they’ll
be wrecked; and red wine and strong brandy will be as rife
as dyke-water, and we’ll drink the health of bonnie Bell
Blackness out of her left foot slipper.’

"The speech of
the young profligate was applauded by several of his
companions, and away they flew to the bay of Blawhooly, from
whence they never returned. The two vessels were observed
all at once to stop in the bosom of the bay, on the spot
where their hulls now appear: the mirth and the rninstrelsy
waxed louder than ever; and the forms of the maidens, with
instruments of music and wine-cups in their hands, thronged
the decks. A boat was lowered; and the same shadowy pilot
who conducted the ships made it start towards the shore with
the rapidity of lightning, and its head knocked against the
bank where the four young men stood, who longed for the
unblest drink. They leaped in with a laugh, and with a laugh
were they welcomed on deck; wine cups were given to each,
and as they raised them to their lips the vessels melted
away beneath their feet ; and one loud shriek, mingled with
laughter still louder, was heard over land and water for
many miles. Nothing more was heard or seen till the morning,
when, the crowd who came to the beach saw with fear and
wonder the two Haunted Ships, such as they now seem, masts
and tackle gone; nor mark, nor sign, by which their name,
country, or destination, could be known, was left remaining.
Such is the tradition of the mariners.”

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